Cladding over an old brick fireplace

Finished fireplace

This fireplace will soon have a new gas insert.  The original marble mantle and wood surround will be replaced with vintage-looking tile.   The existing mantle and surround didn’t match the 1930’s styling of the rest of the house. I found two different types of brick when we removed the mantle and wood surround. To build up the…

Read More

Pratt and Larsen craft tile

Pratt and Larsen fireplace

A husband and wife team of artists , Pratt and Larsen began creating hand made craft tiles over 30 years ago to fill a void in the American market for vintage and artistic tiles.  Their company manufactures tiles entirely in the United States.  This company has grown to 130 employees in downtown north east Portland, Oregon…

Read More

Stone-clad fireplace

Stone Fireplace

The customer had an old brick fireplace and the face of the fireplace   was set actually  back behind the sheetrock.  So I used a special nailing device, a powder  actuated nail gun to install metal lath onto the existing brick. After installing the metal lath I floated over the wire mesh with a special tan mortar mix that  was…

Read More

Cladding over existing brick fireplace with tile

Tile fireplace

The homeowner wanted to update this old fireplace.  They were getting it ready for sale so they only wanted to tile the face of the fireplace and not the hearth.  In this case, the brick is nicely set all in one plane, no protruding bricks.  So because it was laid smoothly, we could actually tile directly to…

Read More